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MDM Developers

SOBRE ESTE BLOG

The MDM Developers Community is open for any developers using IBM's Master Data Management software to connect with each other, stay posted on the latest MDM technical resources, learn how to get the most out of MDM tools, ask questions, and share tips and answers to technical problems.

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Skip the fluff and go deep into the technical details of InfoSphere MDM. In a series we're calling MDM Tech TV, several IBM engineers catch you up on technical topics. These informal video demonstrations give you a quick taste of various features.

You'll see the users and groups in the WebSphere Administrative Console. Then see how the properties files control groups, role mappings, and permissible states/actions for entities and roles. More details are in the docs.

Mike Adams and Gary Chen show the Batch Activity Dashboard where they view and manage batch tasks for data governance. The video features linking and persisting entities for a hybrid MDM implementation.

You'll see how to use the Batch Activity Dashboard to create, schedule, and manage MDM batch tasks such as suspect processing, name and address standardization, and entity persistence. More details are in the docs.

The three new videos complement the existing MDM videos:

MDM Workbench: Create and deploy a virtual configuration

Mike Cobbett creates and deploys a virtual configuration in the MDM Workbench. More details are in the docs.

MDM & Information Server Integration

Lena Woolf follows the path of MDM information with InfoSphere Metadata Workbench. See her demonstrate the MDM integration with Metadata Workbench by using the export feature in the MDM Workbench. More details are in the docs.

Plus several earlier demos of the MDM Workbench, the Application Toolkit, and the 11.0 installation.

There's a new series of blog posts just starting which will be describing how fitting a specific, inflexible, MDM implementation style might cause problems, and how a more adaptive style of MDM could help. The first in the series starts off by reviewing the traditional MDM styles:

With huge pride, we have just shipped the version eleven of MDM, including the new unified MDM Workbench v11. It's been nearly 2 years in the making, and represents the biggest change to the MDM tooling in recent years. In this article we outline these changes and give the reader familiar with previous MDM tools a gentle introduction to what they can expect when they get their hands on the new tools.

The main changes made for v11 workbench can broadly be categorized under the titles unification, simplification and integration.

Unification

Unification is a drive to combine the tools from the v10.1 standard edition (formerly Initiate tools) and the tools from the v10.1 advanced edition into a single set of tools which run in the same Rational Application Developer (RAD) environment. Where the tools were inconsistent, or overlap existed we adopted common approach to make sure both sets of tools work together in a unified tooling environment.

In Summary:

All tools run on a common tooling platform (Rational Application Developer 8.5.1 or Rational Software Architect for WebSphere v8.5.1)

A unified product installer, based on Installation Manager offers a common approach to installing workbench, server and all pre-requisite software, with "typical" and custom install options, and a launchpad to get things started.

Adoption of some common terminology, changing terms where necessary to avoid ambiguity where the same term meant different things in the "physical" and "virtual" arenas.

Deployment of handlers, additions, extensions, mappings, transforms and any java logic are deployed using the same "cba" packaging and deployment mechanism.

The "servers" view in RAD is used by everything which communicates with a server rather than our own list of servers

A combined project migration wizard for development projects, configuration projects and other project types.

Consistent use of eclipse perspectives (MDM Configuration and MDM Development for example)

Support of the "hybrid" capabilities of the MDM operational server which unify the server by having the tools create and customize a pre-built mapping, to create the transform which converts data from "virtual" to the "physical" parts of the MDM operational server.

An example of unification: Consistent use of the perspectives, showing the new MDM development perspective.

Simplification

We want all the tools to be simpler. We aim to cut the time it takes to get value out of the MDM platform; automating where possible to relieve solution developers of repetitive tasks and reducing the amount of knowledge needs to get something working.

Toward this goal the workbench has made these changes :

Easier set-up of the workspace, no longer is there a need to import an .EAR file into your workspace, use of the Development Environment Setup Tool is no longer needed. Just create a fresh workspace and off you go !

Adoption of OSGi modularity in the server means workbench users don't mix content from IBM and content they create in the workspace. All IBM-provided content stays out of the RAD workspace.

Fewer projects in the workspace, containing user-created content means the tools run faster, are more responsive, and less time is taken waiting for builders or wizards to complete.

There is no need to turn off auto-build options, which means users can realize all the benefits of the RAD IDE validation framework and built artifacts stay in-sync with their source artifacts.

Added tools to create a handler. Generation of a handler skeleton code complete with all the java and OSGi packaging required for deploying the handler project is enabled by a new wizard

Removed the need to use the Probablistic Matching Engine (PME) console web application. All of the function this separate web application contained to configure the matching engine is now present in the workbench (including local weight generation), so there is no need to install this separate web tool, or learn how to use it.

A multitude of UI improvements to get dialogs to ask fewer questions, removed steps in processes.

The ability to reset a test server and database instance back to what it was before you started deploying customizations to it, so developers can quickly return to a "clean starting state" when required.

An example of the way version is simpler can be seen by comparing a version 10.1 workspace against a version 11 workspace:

Integrations

"No man is an island" as the saying goes, and the same is true for products. MDM tools now play a wider role in enabling the ingestion and distribution of information in an MDM solution.

Enhancements in this area include:

The custom web services mapping tools are enhanced to be able to understand the format of comma-delimited, pipe-delimited or other non-xml formats, using the Data Format Definition Language (DFDL) standard. A transform from that format to the MDM transaction payload formats can be defined, and the MDM batch processor can then be used to ingest files which are in the non-xml format. The same feature now also supports mapping to XML spec attributes where they are used in the operational server.

A new wizard has been added to facilitate the population of metadata information in Information Server, so InfoSphere Metadata Workbench can be used to perform lineage analysis, with an understanding of the MDM transactions, the transaction payload structures, the physical database tables used in the server, and how each of these pieces of information relate to each other.

A new wizard to populate the palette of the BPM designer tool. Export the "shape" of MDM data objects from either the virtual or physical parts of the operational server, and import that information into the Business Process Management (BPM) designer tool, after which point you can drag-drop such objects onto BPM flows as you design them, speeding up process flow creation.

Upgraded Operational Decision Management (ODM) rule support. Replaces the iLog support we had in previous releases.The ability to refer to an ODM rule and associate it with events in the workbench, and deploy that configuration to the server as a behavior extension.

New tools to help configure an MDM policy monitoring solution. Create a monitoring configuration, deploy it, and the policy monitoring part of MDM gathers statistics and reports on quality metrics of the data held within the operational server.

For example: Our list of export wizards has been expanded to help push MDM metadata to more remote systems.

In summary, we hope you like the changes we've made to the tools, and hope you find that creating, configuring and developing an MDM solution is now quicker and easier than ever before.